


the subtle art of coming apart stitch by stitch

by active_galactic_nuclei



Category: Slipknot (Band)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29486103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/active_galactic_nuclei/pseuds/active_galactic_nuclei
Summary: five times joey fell into paul, and one time paul couldn't catch him
Relationships: Paul Gray/Joey Jordison
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	the subtle art of coming apart stitch by stitch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phantomystery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomystery/gifts).



> for my best friend, happy birthday sidney <3

_Des Moines, Iowa_

_September 12, 1996_

_11:48 PM CST_

Joey scratched at his wrists idly, scanning his eyes across the empty gas station. He hadn’t even wanted to go into work today, hadn’t really wanted to go into work ever, but he had let his logical senses win and trudged up here anyway. He walked around the counter, figuring he might as well actually do the job he got paid for, and started checking the shelves. The yellow lights buzzed above his head as he walked down the aisles, casting a sickly glow onto the bags of chips and candy that lined the displays. As he picked up a bag of potato chips from where it had been discarded by a customer hours earlier, he heard the bell chime to signal somebody had walked in. 

“Hey!” called Paul, Joey instantly recognizing his voice across the store. 

“What are you doing here?” Joey smiled, making his way over to the man. 

“I can’t sleep, figured I’d come try and save you from your boredom,” he answered, walking with Joey as he slid back behind the counter. 

“Gonna have to try pretty hard to do that,” Joey teased, leaning his head down to rest on his hands where they sat on the counter.

“Oh yeah?” Paul chuckled, “I bet we can find something to do around here for the next few hours.”

“And what might that be?” Joey quipped back, smirking with amusement at Paul’s antics. Paul didn’t respond, just started making his way to the break room, Joey in tow. 

Pulling open the door, Paul walked around to the dingy old couch that sat in the back of the room, sitting down and motioning to Joey to do the same. 

“You know, there's still a lot I don’t know about you,” Paul stated, tone taking on a more serious quality.

“Well, what do you want to know?” Joey asked, stretching out on the couch like a cat, feet in Paul’s lap. 

“You’ve never told me your favourite colour, your favourite food, your favourite country-” Paul started, Joey cutting him off with a laugh.

“My favourite _country_?” Joey responded, laughing at Paul’s fake hurt expression.

“I’m serious! It’s an important thing to know about somebody,” Paul defended, throwing Joey’s feet off of him in mock offense.

“Your mom is an important thing to know about somebody,” Joey snickered.

“What are you? Five years old?” Paul laughed back at Joey’s immature joke. 

“Would you still love me if I was?” Joey questioned, struggling to put his feet back where they were as Paul started playfully fighting him off. 

“Stupid question, I’d love you no matter what,” Paul answered, and Joey couldn’t quite tell why it made his breath catch in his throat. 

“Do you really mean that?” Joey wondered, now feeling much more serious. 

‘Of course I do, why wouldn’t I?” Paul reassured, suddenly very aware of how close he was to the man. And suddenly both of them felt the charge of something much deeper than this in the air, and they were powerless to stop it. 

Joey’s lips were soft against Paul’s, his skin smooth and touchable under Paul’s fingers, and Paul started to wonder how he had ever lived without this. 

And as quickly as it started it was over, Joey pulling back slowly to look at Paul. Paul studied him there, face framed by the two long pieces of dark hair that always managed to fall out of his ponytail, as Joey spoke up. 

“Norway…” he muttered softly, “my favourite country is Norway.”

_Malibu, California_

_October 4, 1998_

_3:12 AM PST_

The recording studio was dark, all the lights dimmed and not a drop of sunlight to be found coming in through the windows. Joey was sitting on the couch, absentmindedly reading some magazine he had found on the coffee table when Paul walked in. 

“You done for the day?” Joey asked quietly, trying not to disturb the peaceful atmosphere that was so rarely found when all nine of them were found in a space together. 

“Yeah, I’m not doing any more tonight,” Paul answered in much the same tone. 

“I wanted to get more done on drums, but I think Shawn’s in there recording right now,” Joey explained, setting the magazine back where he’d grabbed it from. 

“Just do it tomorrow,” Paul told him, nonchalant as ever. 

“Yeah I know, it’s just… This is our chance, man, I don’t want to let anything get away from me if I can help it,” Joey fretted, mindlessly chewing the skin around his cuticles as he explained.

“It’s not going to get away from us, Joe,” Paul muttered, “get some rest.”

So Joey laid his head in Paul’s lap, letting the soft white noise of the fan buzzing overhead lull him to sleep. As Paul watched him, face relaxed in his unconscious state, he wondered idly if forever could ever be enough time. 

_Van Nuys, California_

_January 30, 2001_

_8:32 PM PST_

The arguing was incessant, hammering through Joey’s skull like a freight train. 

“God, can’t you guys shut the fuck up?” he snapped, Shawn and Sid’s heads turning to him quickly. 

“Fuck you, Joey. You aren’t doing _shit_ around here!” Sid snapped back, voice high with anger.

“ _I_ don’t do shit? Because half of this record just wrote itself, huh?” Joey retorted, temper running thin as a rail. 

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” Sid argued, and Shawn walked away with a deep growling sigh as he seemed to give up hope of this conversation going anywhere. 

“Then what the fuck did you mean, Sid? That what I’m doing is good enough? That spreading myself so thin I’m turning fucking _see-through_ isn’t _enough_ for you?” Joey retaliated, voice raising louder as his patience finally wore all the way down. 

“You’re such a fucking asshole!” Sid yelled, walking out of the room with loud, heavy footfalls that were almost enough to make Joey chase after him and wring his fucking neck out. 

Luckily for him (or luckily for Sid), a certain 6’2 bassist walked into the room just then. 

“You should give him a break,” he said, moving to sit next to a very worked up Joey. 

“Why? Cause he’s going through something hard?” Joey groaned, “we’re all suffering here, Paul. Doesn’t give him an excuse to be a bitch to everyone.”

“What good does it do you to keep arguing with him? You’re just winding him up more and more every time,” Paul explained, and Joey hated how right he was.

“Don’t want to talk about it anymore…” Joey murmured, leaning his head on Paul’s chest. Paul pet his hair softly, brushing it away from his eyes as he stared down into them. Paul snuck a kiss to the crown of his head, resting his chin on top of Joey’s head of long black hair.

So when Jim walked through the room in search of god knows what, he pretended not to notice the way Joey’s hand had wandered up to press against Paul’s chest, feeling for his heartbeat to ground himself from the stress in a way that was definitely just south of platonic. And Joey pretended not to notice the way Paul looked at him like he had hung every star in the sky, because he knew if he looked back he’d start to believe the same thing. 

_Los Angeles, California_

_July 16th, 2003_

_7:45 PM PST_

Somehow, a sense of calm had settled over the mansion as Joey walked outside to sit on the back patio for a smoke. It was a warm summer’s night, though the cool ocean breeze rolled down faintly through the hills. The sky was clear, the moon in the sky becoming more prominent as the light filtered out. The first hints of stars had begun to twinkle across the horizon, and Joey studied them while he took another drag of his cigarette. 

“Pretty out here,” Paul said, shutting the glass door beside him as he sat down in a seat next to Joey. 

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice,” he responded, handing the cigarette over to Paul as he wordlessly asked for it. 

“So much better this time around,” Paul muttered absentmindedly, thinking about how it had been recording the last album. He and Joey shared a knowing glance, thinking of how tortuous it had been. They hadn’t even known if the band would make it this long back then. 

Joey took the last drag off the cigarette, putting it out in the dirty ashtray that sat on the glass table. He stood from his chair and Paul nearly asked him where he was going until he realized that he was climbing onto his lap, long legs dangling over the armrest and thin milky arms coming to rest behind Paul’s neck as he buried his face in his shoulder. 

“I love you, Paulie,” he murmured, so faint Paul almost wondered if he imagined it until Joey lifted his head up to plant a soft fleeting kiss on his lips. 

“I love you too,” Paul responded, hand coming up to cradle Joey’s head in the crook of his shoulder. He looked down at him and couldn’t help but feel like things weren’t always meant to make sense. 

_Jamaica, Iowa_

_March 24, 2008_

_12:28 AM CST_

Joey stared out the window, watching a raccoon that he had spotted by the trashcan out back holding a piece of rotten fruit in it’s paws. He was illuminated by the porch light, a hazy yellow glow cast over him. 

“What are you smiling about?” Paul asked, tone light and playful. 

“Look,” Joey instructed, pressing a thin pale finger to the glass windowpane. Paul followed his gaze out to the animal, lips curving up into a smile as he watched him eat the garbage from the ground. 

“He’s cute,” Paul said quietly, wrapping his arms around Joey from behind and placing his hands over Joey’s much smaller ones. Joey sighed contentedly, tipping his head back to look up at Paul. 

“M’ tired,” Joey muttered, and Paul chuckled lightly as he leaned down to kiss Joey’s forehead. 

“Go to sleep, then,” he replied, a smile evident in his voice. 

“Come with me?” Joey asked, and Paul was already following him to the bedroom.

“Of course, Joe,” he answered, voice quiet as he tried not to disturb anyone else sleeping down the hall. As Joey climbed into bed, comfortably pressed into Paul’s side, he felt safe and warm and so content inside that he couldn’t imagine how he did it without Paul next to him. As Paul looked down at Joey’s sleep addled face, he saw the only thing in his life precious enough to warrant protecting.

_Des Moines, Iowa_

_May 26, 2010_

_10:02 AM CST_

Joey had never felt so broken before in his life. He ached all over, inside and out and so deeply that he felt even his soul was weary with it. He hadn’t stopped crying since he had found out two days before, couldn’t bring himself to do anything _but_ cry. He hadn’t eaten, hadn’t showered, had barely even had a full glass of water to drink in the past two days. It had been the longest 48 hours of his life, and it seemed to stretch infinitely longer the more time passed. The end, it seemed, would never come. 

Joey forced himself out of bed, the pounding migraine driving him to go to the medicine cabinet and swallow a mouthful of pills that he didn’t bother to count or even check the label of. He was so tired. The sort of tired that no amount of sleep or caffeine or speed could fix, the sort of tired that seeps deep into your bones and soaks through the very fiber of your being. He opened his phone to see a text from Sid. A simple “hey man, r u doing ok?” appeared on the screen, and he couldn’t even bring himself to type out more than two letters, sending back a short and unequivocal “no” before shutting the phone off and throwing it across the bed. 

He sighed, dropping back down onto the bed that now seemed more like a jail cell. He stared at the ceiling, the ringing in his ears nearly driving him to the point of tears again. All he wanted was to call Paul, he would know exactly what to say, exactly how to fix this. But this was a situation that Paul couldn’t fix, because this was a situation that Paul had caused. He rolled over onto his side and let the tears flow freely from his eyes as he cried silently. 

As he felt the tears soak through his pillow, he wondered how anyone could ever believe that God was kind.


End file.
